I had heard of Runebound, but never played it for myself. So when a friend of mine called me from Games By James at the Mall of America wanting some input on a potential purchase, I was at a loss. He ended up buying it and I knew I was in for an introduction.
Runebound is a relative newcomer to the board game scene having been published in 2004 by Fantasy Flight Games. Seeing as I just did a write-up on Talisman, Runebound presents a nice comparison since both games fall in the same catagory of fantasy/adventure/RPG.
The first thing I noticed as we were setting things up was that Runebound is a bit more complex in structure, taking a drastically different freeform approach. Where Talisman follows a fairly simple, linear design for its three-tier board comprised of realms, Runebound's board is presented as a sizable, hex-filled map, consisting mostly of wilderness (forests, mountains, plains, hills, swamps, etc.) along with a handful of cities (think MiddleEarth-esque). The players (characters) are free to go wherever they wish throughout the game giving it a more "true" RPG feel.
Each player gets to select a character card from a fairly large selection. These cards reminded me of Magic cards in their presentation- the nicely illustrated character picture accompanied by a bit of character lore and flavor text, a list of special traits, the health and stamina stats and finally the base statistics for the three major types of combat: ranged, melee and magical.
The object of the game is somewhat similar to Talisman, but the idea of direct competition is taken away, replaced with a feel of cooperation as all characters seek the same goal of saving the land from evil Dragon Overlords. Growth of the characters along with completion of the goal are accomplished through "encounters" or quests, which take place only on certain, fixed hexes located across the map. The fixed nature of these encounters may seem counter-intuitive and boring, but let me assure you that the game's developers planned ahead.
Movement is dictated using x4 special six-sided dice that are marked with terrain symbols instead of numbers. A player rolls the dice and then uses one die for each space moved, but they can only move to a space that matches one of the dice. This adds an element of unpredictability and decision-making to the movement phase, because you cannot simply choose to take a straight path. To simulate injury, if a player has been injured in combat, until they heal in a city (or with an item) they roll only x3 movement dice.
Onto the quests. There are four levels of quests in the game with level one being the easiest and level four (also known as "game winning" quests) being the most difficult. No enounter space is ever guaranteed to be the same as there is a deck of cards for each level of quest. These are shuffled at the start of the game and the top card drawn when a quest hex is landed on. Additionally, the card drawn may not be an enemy of creature, but rather it could be an effect (personal or global) or even treasure of some type. When this happens, the card is played, the effect or item assessed and then another card is drawn. This continues until a creature card is drawn and combat commences. I found this aspect of the game to be well thought-out because it means that a turn is never routine, but more open-ended much like an RPG.
Combat is very simple. When an encounter takes place, the card drawn is read (it also includes lore and flavor text) and it may require that the player make an attempt at a "test" before battle begins. Let me back up...
To make another comparison, the characters in Runebound take the templates from Talisman one step further adding skills to the basic traits. An example might by that your character has "sneak" and for every sneak test you are required to roll for, you get a +2 bonus. Rolling is done with two 10-sided dice where the player simply totals the numbers rolled (0 = 10). The encounter may require your character to make a sneak test > 12 or take an attack penalty of -1. Once actual combat starts, it is simply a matter of you range, melee and magic attack rolls being higher than the value stated for each on the enemy card. For each round of combat, the player chooses one to be their offensive attack while the others are defensive rolls, and if successful they deal x amount of damage for their attack. (Example: Melee might be valued at 3/2.... 3 being the base attack value (+ 2D10) and 2 is the amount of damage dealt for a successful attack).
For each successful encounter, the player then receives x number of experience points (level 1 = 1, level 2 = 2, etc.) For every 5 experience, a player can level up, adding bonus to one attack of their choosing or adding to their health. Players also gain gold from defeated enemies and may by spells, weapons and armor in the cities as well as allies that travel with them. All these are used to augment the various attacks.
While I found the game to well developed and more complex than Talisman, it was very easy to learn, even intuitive having had computer RPG experience. It also sports a great sense of balance throughout. Higher level quests are significantly tougher, but in a scaled way that allows for characters with less experience to pull off rare dramatic feats of victory while still keeping the chance for failure for a higher level character well within the realm of possibility. For a board game, this is probably the most dynamic I've played in that regard. It kept me on my toes.
I really appreciated the combined use of dice and cards that the developers used to drive this game's mechanics. It keeps the game randomized and manageable at the same time which results in a very high replay value! It will be interesting to see what Games Workshop does with the 4th Edition of Talisman with Runebound now on the market for 3 years.
The bottom line on Runebound is that it is extremely fun and relatively easy to learn. It also has a boatload of expansions currently available online, so player really don't need to worry about this one wearing out any time soon. I would rate this game as a bit higher difficulty than Talisman due its being more elaborate. Talisman can take a while to play out and my guess is that Runebound might take a bit longer on average. If you're looking for a new game to feed your hunger for adventure, Runebound should be on your list.
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